Bronislava Nijinska took a satirical view of all the lovely male dancers who passed through the Ballets Russes. Favourites of Diaghilev, they were given opportunities to choreograph, opportunities for which she herself had to battle. "What a choreographer Bronia would have made," said Diaghilev, "if only she'd been a man."

Nijinska took her revenge in the roles she created for these boys, showcasing their virtuosity, but casting them as dumb, vain athletes. The Handsome Young Chap's solo from Le Train Bleu (1924) is a classic. First created for Anton Dolin, Nijinska captured his famously acrobratic technique – but also his callow, overweening confidence.

Vadim Muntagirov, dancing this fragment in English National Ballet's revival, gets the tone perfectly. He rips through its tricks with wonderful elan – vaunting aerial turns, one-armed handstands in which his legs curve into a graceful, sickle moon. Yet Muntagirov is deliciously self-parodic, too, as he lingeringly flexes his biceps and cocks his head with a narcissistic smirk.

ENB's revival of this solo is paired with Jeux, a ballet created by Vaslav Nijinsky in 1912, and here reinvented by Wayne Eagling. Nijinsky's distinctive style had a profound influence on his sister (he was the one male artist she admired). And Eagling, whose own work imagines the scene of Jeux's original creation, has absorbed that style, too. The first half of his ballet is rich in Nijinsky-esque detail: archaic profile poses, delicately curled hand gestures. His choreography has a tautness that emphasises the ballet's sexual ambiguities and intrigues.

It's a shame that Eagling then reverts to a more conventional style of modern choreography, and that his carefully accumulated tensions unravel rather than resolve. But this Jeux is very handsomely staged and danced.

The last of Diaghilev's choreographers was George Balanchine, whose 1928 Apollo has become an enduring classic. For ENB's staging, Zdenek Konvalina brings a dynamic clipped clarity to the title role, but it's only Daria Klimentova (Terpsichore), who takes Stravinsky's transcendent music deep into her body, and really plays with the choreography's wit.

Serge Lifar danced the first Apollo, and if his own choreography never matched his charisma as a dancer, Suite en Blanc (1943) remains a scintillating crowd-pleaser. ENB cast it with much young talent, but honours go to Elena Glurdjidze in the flirtatious Cigarette solo. She allowed each phrase to linger intoxicatingly, so that her dancing trailed a cloud of delicate, heady perfume. When she snapped into the final flashing coda, the sudden concentrated force of her dancing had the high voltage kick of an electric shock.